I HAVE OFTEN been asked the nearly impossible question to answer: ‘Who is the best batsman you have ever seen?’ It is difficult to answer because there are so many candidates, and they have played at different times against varying strengths of bowling. Who can attempt to choose between Bradman, Hammond, Compton, Sobers, Hutton, May, Cowdrey, Greg Chappell and Viv Richards, to name just a few? They were all great and each had his own special style. So I normally play safe and reply: ‘I will tell you who was the most perfect batsman technically, whose every stroke was an exact copy out of the textbooks. There may have been batsmen who were his equal, but you cannot be better than perfection.’ I then, usually to the surprise of the questioner, nominate Barry Richards. Note Barry not Viv.
He had, and played, every stroke off both the front and back foot. With a high back lift he played beautifully straight, and used his feet far more than the others I have mentioned, with the exception of Bradman, Hammond and Compton. He would even dance down the pitch to the fast bowlers, just like George Gunn used to do, except that George walked casually down the pitch, rather than dance.
Barry’s technique was backed by his supreme confidence in his own ability, and an insolent contempt for all bowlers. Goodness knows how great his achievements would have been had he had the incentive of Test cricket, where he could match his skills against the world’s best. Sadly, he became bored with county cricket – there was not sufficient challenge. I sometimes thought that he must have felt like a father playing against the boys in the parents’ match. He was that good, and so much better than his contemporaries. It was all a sad waste of talent.
He once said that he dreaded having to go down to the ground every day at 9.30 am. I remonstrated with him about this, and pointed out how lucky he was compared with so many other people like miners, office or factory workers. I pointed out rather pompously that he had been given these great gifts and should do his best to make full use of them, but it all came down to the fact that he needed a challenge from his equals and, robbed of Test cricket, he very seldom got it.
In fact he only played in four Tests – against Australia in South Africa in 1970. He didn’t do too badly either! 7 innings, 508 runs, and an average of 72.57. I was lucky enough to see all these innings, as Charles Fortune of SABC had kindly asked me along to be the ‘neutral’ commentator with Alan McGilvray and himself. Barry never once failed, and how’s this for consistency: 29, 32, 140, 65, 35, 81, 126. That 140 alone was worth travelling all the way to South Africa. He reached his hundred in the first over after lunch off only 116 balls.
There then took place one of the most thrilling partnerships I have ever seen in Test cricket. He and Graeme Pollock put on 103 runs in an hour, completely pulverising the admittedly not too strong Australian attack of McKenzie, Connolly, Freeman and Gleeson. It was not like most big partnerships, where one batsman does most of the scoring whilst the other plays second fiddle. On this occasion Barry and Graeme matched each other with four after four. It was thrilling to watch and I felt privileged to be there to see such perfect stroke-play. It must have given Barry a bitter taste of what might have been, although at the time the South African tour to England in the summer was still due to take place.
Barry is tall with fair curly hair, and good-looking with an engaging smile. I always found him a friendly person, but he could undoubtedly be temperamental, brought on I am sure by his frustration. In the end he decided to prove his greatness by selling his skill to the highest bidder. He was perhaps the first top cricketer to realise his true commercial worth, and this may have made him appear greedy and grasping.
He played, of course, with great success and panache for Hampshire after one experimental match for Gloucestershire. He went there originally because of his great friend Mike Procter. As I have mentioned, they were both given a trial and played in just one match – against the visiting South African side in 1965.
Mike continued to play for Gloucestershire, but Barry did not make up his mind immediately what he really wanted to do. So it was not until 1968 that he began his ten years’ career with Hampshire, and what a first season he had. He scored 2,395 runs, the next highest aggregate by any of the other Hampshire batsmen being 990 by Barry Reed. He scored over 1,000 runs for the county nine times before trying to sell his wares elsewhere, and played with great success for South Australia in 1970–1 when he made 356 runs against Western Australia – 325 of them coming on the first day.
He returned to England to play for the Rest of the World in the five ‘Tests’ against England in place of the cancelled South African tour. Strangely enough he didn’t really take advantage of this opportunity to prove his great talent, only averaging 36.71 with 257 runs from his eight innings. After he left Hampshire he signed up with Kerry Packer and was one of the successes in the World Series cricket.
In addition to his batting he bowled off-breaks off a short run and gave the ball an enormous tweak, and with only 77 wickets in his career was much underbowled. He was a good catcher anywhere, especially in the slips.
I have seen him on my various trips to South Africa and interviewed him in our commentary box during the Lord’s Bicentenary match in 1987. He was geniality itself and half admitted that he regretted not having enjoyed county cricket as much as he should have done. I felt that he was casting a longing eye out on the middle and would dearly have loved to have been batting out there against the likes of Marshall and Quadir. At the age of forty-two I reckon that he would still have shown them a thing or two and delighted the large crowd of cricket connoisseurs who came to the match.
I am sure that he will regret it until his dying day. It was a snap decision taken on the spur of the moment, which prompted an action totally contrary to the spirit of cricket. It happened at Melbourne on 1 February 1981, in the third of four Finals between Australia and New Zealand in the Benson and Hedges World Series Cup.
New Zealand had won the first match and Australia the second, so it was an important game to win. Greg Chappell was captain of Australia who batted first and made 235 for 4 off their 50 overs – just about par for a winning score. There was a controversy when Chappell – on 52 – refused to walk when Snedden claimed to have made a low catch at deep mid-wicket. The New Zealand team appealed vehemently to the umpires, who both gave it not out because they said they hadn’t been looking! They were evidently both watching for short runs.
There was therefore some slight ill-feeling between the two teams, especially as Chappell went on to make 90. Thanks to a fine 102 not out by Bruce Edgar, New Zealand were only just behind the clock when the last over came, and they still needed 15 to win with four wickets in hand. It was to be bowled by Trevor Chappell, the youngest of the three brothers. The other bowlers had all completed their allotted ten overs each. Richard Hadlee hit the first ball for four, and was lbw to the next: 11 runs needed, four balls and three wickets left. The new batsman, Ian Smith, hit a couple of twos before being bowled by the fifth ball. So in came Brian McKechnie with 7 runs needed to win, or 6 for a tie, off the last ball of the match.
It was then that Greg did the dirty trick. He ordered his brother Trevor to bowl this final ball underarm all along the ground – in cricket parlance a ‘sneak’ or a ‘grub’. McKechnie was no great batsman and would have been pushed to hit a six off a slow half-volley on this huge Melbourne arena. Even had he done so, Australia would not have lost. It would have been a very worthy tie with McKechnie a justifiable hero, but it was not to be. The grub made such a task completely impossible, and McKechnie made no attempt to hit the ball in protest.
All hell broke loose and Greg’s decision must still haunt him. In a telegram to the Australian Prime Minister, the New Zealand Prime Minister accused Australia of cowardice. The whole cricketing world on television, radio and in the press mercilessly criticised Greg’s sportsmanship – or lack of it. He later publicly regretted what he had done, but of course his reputation as a sportsman suffered irreparably.
This was a pity because his action was not really characteristic of Greg. Admittedly, he had a strong will to win and played the game harder than most out in the middle, but except for the unpleasant habit of ‘sledging’ which he had learned from his brother Ian, when he was captain, he always played fairly. And later, when he took over from Ian, he appeared to become more relaxed and less aggressive. But he was undoubtedly a tough character; tall, dark and handsome, he sported a beard for much of his career and didn’t smile too often. He could be petulant in his reactions. I remember seeing him once slap a streaker on his bare bottom with his bat.
As a cricketer he must be among the top five ever produced by Australia. He had a good pedigree. His mother was Vic Richardson’s daughter and she used to bowl to her three sons in the garden. Brother Ian was the loud, confident extrovert, while Greg was more reserved. He divided his playing time between South Australia, where he was born (57 matches), and Queensland (51). He was a tower of strength to the latter and restored an interest in the state side and improved their standard of play.
As a batsman Ian was the more aggressive and enterprising, and more willing to take risks and take on the bowlers, but Greg was the more correct. He had an upright style, was stiff-backed with a high back lift, and played with the straightest of bats, lb start with, his main stroke was the on-drive between mid-on and mid-wicket – he played it as well as Peter May, and that is saying a lot – but as time went on he developed a repertoire of strokes all round the wicket.
I was lucky to see his first Test innings at Perth in 1970 against Ray Illingworth’s side. He made 108 and immediately showed his class by the way he played the pace attack of Snow, Lever and Shuttleworth on the fast Perth pitch. He seemed to have plenty of time to play his strokes, the majority being on-drives. Towards the end of his innings he cut loose and completely dominated the England bowlers – his last 60 runs coming in only 13 overs, or just under the hour. So he scored a hundred in his first Test innings, and fourteen years later he scored 182 against Pakistan at Sydney in his last Test innings – the only Test batsman ever to do this double.
During this innings he also became the first Australian to score 7,000 runs in Test matches. He passed Don Bradman’s total of 6,996 runs, but has always modestly disclaimed any relevance in this. He points out that he had 151 innings against Bradman’s 80. It was also his 24th Test hundred, a total only exceeded among Australian batsmen by Bradman (29), Border (27) and Steve Waugh (25).
Also in the Sydney match Greg caught his 122nd catch in Tests, passing Colin Cowdrey’s previous record of 120. He was a fine fielder anywhere, but in later years fielded mostly in the slips, where he made so many of his catches. He always gave the impression that he was casual, and made no fuss nor showed any sign of elation when he took a catch, but he made many brilliant ones, plucking the ball out of the air in the manner of Hammond, Cowdrey or Sharpe.
As if all this was not enough, he was one of those invaluable change bowlers, who look innocent enough from the pavilion but are in the habit of picking up a vital wicket to break a stand. He was medium-pace and did a bit in the air and off the pitch, and undoubtedly learned much about the art of bowling during his two seasons with Somerset in 1968 and 1969. His experience of the more difficult English conditions also did much to help his batting.
Greg also created a (then) Australian record by captaining them in 48 Tests. He could have been captain in many more Tests and could have scored another 1,000 runs or so, had he not signed up with Kerry Packer, where he was a great success. I saw him play in three of the five matches in the World XI v Australia series in 1972, and he batted brilliantly, scoring 425 runs at an average of 106.25 in the three matches.
Oh, I have forgotten, there is yet another record which he broke and now shares. In 1974 against England in Perth, he became the first non-wicket-keeper to catch seven catches in a Test. This was later equalled by Yajurvindra Singh against England for India at Bangalore in 1977.
So that is Greg Chappell, a superb player rivalling the best in all Test cricket. He was always pleasant and friendly to me, and is a far nicer person than his unfortunate action with the sneak at Melbourne would suggest.
All games have their controversial figures – cricket perhaps more than most. And Dennis Lillee certainly qualifies as one of them. Off the field he was intelligent, friendly and normally well mannered. I say normally, because he did once break protocol by thrusting a pencil and paper at the Queen for her autograph during one of those presentations in front of the pavilion. But as I say, he was friendly enough, and didn’t seem to mind that, for obvious reasons, I used to call him Laguna.
What a change when he was on the field, however. With his longish black hair and moustache he was a ferocious and swarthy-looking person – rather like those gauchos in cowboy films. He was quick to lose his temper and often blasted the unfortunate batsman with savage verbal abuse. As a weapon he had a lethal bouncer which he didn’t fail to unleash when he felt like it.
There were several ways of dealing with his temperament. You could keep quiet and disregard his abuse. You could – if you had the guts – taunt him, as Trevor Bailey would have done and Derek Randall did, especially in that great innings of his in the Centenary Test in Melbourne. Or – if you were good enough – you could challenge him and match your skill against his, as Ian Botham did on several occasions, but especially at Old Trafford in 1981. England were in trouble – 104 for 5 – when Botham came in at number seven. He played himself in for his first thirty runs, then Lillee was given the new ball and the fight was on. Botham proceeded to show Lillee who was the master. Lillee gave it all he got and bowled very fast from the Stretford End. He tried Botham with three vicious bouncers, which were all contemptuously flicked off his eyebrows by Botham, and went sailing over long leg for six. The battle was won, but perhaps only Botham could have won it in such a daring and devastating way.
Apart from his personality, what sort of bowler was Lillee? He was as fast as anyone else since the war, but like Lindwall learned to conserve his energies and keep his really fast ball up his sleeve. He had a flowing run-up to the wicket and a perfect action, with a high right arm and his chin tucked in behind his left arm as he peered down the pitch. He could swing the ball and move it off the pitch; he cleverly disguised his variations in pace and his yorker was as lethal as his bouncer. It’s impossible to say whether he was better than Lindwall or not, but without doubt he was one of the greatest fast bowlers of all time.
I first saw him on Ray Illingworth’s tour in the sixth Test at Adelaide, when he got off to a good start with 5 for 84 in the first innings in which he bowled in Test cricket. He was to take five wickets in a Test innings another twenty-two times, and ten wickets in a Test seven times. He impressed everyone at Adelaide, and the English batsmen realised what they would have to face for the next twelve years or so.
He always studied the art of bowling and took the trouble to learn about English conditions by playing in the Lancashire League in 1971. He was still only twenty-one years old, and his future looked assured when he took 31 wickets the following year on Australia’s tour of England under Ian Chappell. But then tragedy struck. He suffered stress fractures of the lower spine and it looked as if his playing days were over – but he was saved by his character, determination, discipline and guts. For more than a year he had painful treatment and carried out demanding remedial exercises. He refused to give up, and it paid him handsomely. He came back to Test cricket against Mike Denness’s team in Australia in 1974, and with Jeff Thomson devastated the England batsmen with some of the fastest, most ferocious and dangerous fast bowling I have ever seen. Lillee took 25 wickets in the series and would have taken more had he not bowled only six overs in the final Test, before he bruised his right foot.
He never looked back after that and took his Test total to 355 wickets, tenth in the list of all Test bowlers. He would – like Underwood and several others – have taken many more had he not been one of the first to sign for Kerry Packer after the Centenary Test of 1977. When ‘peace’ was declared two years later he returned to play in thirty-seven Tests, until a bad knee forced his retirement in 1983. But, being Lillee, he came back again, playing for Tasmania in 1987 and for Northamptonshire in 1988. To undertake a busy season in county cricket after all his injuries and at the age of thirty-eight was proof of his determination and courage.
He was a useful batsman when he felt the occasion called for it. His highest test score was 73 not out at Lord’s in 1975, and it remained his highest score in all first-class cricket. He came in at number ten with the score at 133 for 8. He put on 66 with Edwards, and a further 69 with Mallett for the last wicket. He hit three huge sixes and eight fours and batted for two-and-a-quarter hours, which just shows what he could do. This was the match where a streaker ran on for the first time ever in a Test match. As he did the splits over the stumps at the pavilion end, Alan Knott, who was the non-striker at the Nursery End, said it was the first time he had ever seen two balls coming down the pitch towards him.
Lillee made four tours (1972, 1975, 1980 and 1981) of England and at the start of the 1981 tour he caught pneumonia and didn’t play until the second Prudential match on 6 June. But he was fit by the time the Tests came along and took 39 wickets in the series. When he had his pneumonia he was treated by a lady doctor, ‘Micky’ Day, who looked after some of the staff at Lord’s. She unwittingly encouraged Lillee to break the law, telling him that she would only declare him fit for play if he came in and changed his sweaty shirt after every bowling spell. So there was Lillee walking off – presumably with the permission of the umpires – and a substitute coming on to take his place. At that time the law stated that no fielder should leave the field to change his clothing or to have a rub-down. Nowadays they can do so, but no substitute is allowed on to take their place. So Dr Day caused a change in the laws.
I have earlier said that Lillee was short tempered and became an aggressive character once on the field of play. There were two famous instances when his temper got the better of him. Both, funnily enough, occurred in Perth – perhaps the famous ‘Freemantle Doctor’ affected his liver! Anyway, in 1979 against England he came in to bat with an aluminium bat which a firm was trying to market. Both the umpires and Mike Brearley objected, and there was a ten-minute delay while Greg Chappell tried to persuade Lillee to use an ordinary bat. He finally agreed but flung the aluminium bat forty yards or so away in anger. This unfortunate episode caused another change in the laws, which now state that ‘the blade shall be made of wood’.
The other incident occurred at Perth in the first Test against Pakistan in 1981. Javed Miandad was captain of Pakistan, and he was not the most popular player in any cricketing country. He could be infuriating, and somehow got up Lillee’s goat. Lillee deliberately tried to impede him when he was going for a run, and then aimed a kick at Javed’s backside. Whether he actually connected I’m not sure, but Javed was so angry that he then tried to hit Lillee with his bat. With hundreds of thousands of young people watching on television, it was pathetic and unacceptable that two grown men playing for their countries should have behaved like this.
One final piece of unusual behaviour from Lillee was when, in the 1981 Test at Headingley, with Australia only needing 130 to win, the odds against England were 500–1 (these were assessed by Godfrey Evans, and proved rather expensive for Ladbrokes). As they watched England going out to field, Lillee and Marsh saw a friend going off to back England. Hearing the odds, they are said to have shouted: ‘Put a fiver on for us.’ I think it was more of a joke than anything else, with nothing sinister in it, especially as Lillee made 17 in a gallant stand of 35 for the ninth wicket to try to win the match for Australia.
After his retirement from Test cricket Lillee proved himself an astute businessman by putting money into the great Australian film success Crocodile Dundee. I am thankful that I never had to bat against him, but I am pleased that I saw him at his fastest and best, with his Australian crowds encouraging him as he bustled in on his long run-up to the wicket with shouts of, ‘Lilleeeeee, Lilleeeeee.’
As always seems to happen when I am travelling in a London taxi, the driver was talking cricket to me through his glass partition. With all the traffic noise it’s not always easy to hear what they say, and it’s necessary to shout back one’s answers, but it is nice to know how many people are interested in cricket. What about Botham? Why don’t we sack the selectors? The questions come thick and fast. ‘I was in the City the other day,’ said my driver, ‘and there was a queue about two hundred yards long outside a bookshop. And do you know,’ he added, ‘they all seemed to be women.’ I wasn’t at all surprised when he informed me that, on making enquiries, he was told that Imran Khan was inside signing copies of his new book.
He was certainly the most glamorous player in modern cricket. He was a dashing figure with striking good looks and ‘come up and see me some time’ eyes. He had a soft beguiling voice and, at the time, was one of the most eligible bachelors alive. He came from a well-to-do family in Lahore with strong cricketing traditions: two previous Pakistan captains, Javed Burki and Majid Khan, were his cousins, and as an added bonus his uncle was chairman of the Lahore selectors! This may have helped with his selection to tour England in 1971 when still only eighteen years old. He was already a tearaway fast bowler and a useful batsman, but it didn’t do him much good. In the first Test at Lord’s he was run out for 5, and although he bowled twenty-eight overs for only 55 runs he didn’t take a wicket, was dropped, and did not play in the remaining two Tests.
From then on, however, he became Pakistan’s pin-up boy and was revered and hero-worshipped by every cricket follower – and that meant most of the population. Proof of his popularity came in 1987 when he publicly announced that he would play no more Test cricket, but by public demand – and, it is said, some ‘persuasion’ from the president, General Zia – he decided to go as captain to the West Indies. The result was a thrilling series. Pakistan won the first Test by nine wickets, the second was honourably drawn, and the West Indies won the third in an exciting two-wicket victory. Tony Cozier, the West Indian commentator and writer, headlined his report ‘Imran’s Triumphant Return’, and he went on to say that Pakistan were inspired by the personal example and leadership of their captain.
He has undoubtedly been an inspiration to Pakistan cricket, and perhaps because of his upbringing has always been a natural leader. He is highly intelligent, and as a result of his playing ability he was always able to lead by example. When he went up to Oxford for three years he was, unusually, elected captain in his second year, a tribute to his character. As Frank Worrell did for the West Indies, so was Imran able to weld the different personalities in Pakistan into a close-knit team with tremendous confidence in their ability to win.
As a player he was one of the great Test all-rounders. At one time he was possibly the fastest bowler in the world, but time – and the odd injury – tempered him into a bowler in the Lindwall-Hadlee mould. He could still bowl as fast as most, but used his speed less frequently. He was mainly an in-swinger, with a fine high action and an inexhaustible supply of energy. With a new ball he occasionally bowled an out-swinger, and could bowl a yorker and a bouncer as well as anybody. He had various injuries, including a broken left arm as a boy, and a stress fracture of his left shin which kept him out of Test cricket for three years. Even so in 88 Tests between 1971 and 1992 he took 362 Test wickets at the low average of 22.81, and five wickets in an innings 23 times. He learned a great deal of his bowling skills during his six seasons with Worcestershire from 1971 to 1976 before moving to Sussex, for whom he continued to play for the next decade. He enjoyed the nightlife of London, where he lived, and he used to commute daily to Hove for his cricket.
His bowling rather overshadowed his batting. He usually batted at number seven and was a powerful hitter who could turn a game with his forcing strokes backed up by a sound defence. Perhaps he should have scored more than his 3,807 runs in Tests, but he put most of his energy into his bowling. Needless to say, with such a fine physique and athleticism he was a magnificent fielder anywhere.
Imran is very much his own man. He knows what he wants and usually gets it. He has had his occasional brush with the authorities – his option to play for Packer is an example – but his charm and good manners have helped to make his path easier. He is an intensely proud man who liked nothing better than to fight for Pakistan with all the energy, guts and skill that he could muster. He retired from cricket after leading Pakistan to a marvellous victory in the World Cup in Melbourne in 1992. He has done them proud, and they reward him with fervent hero-worship.